His Kingsize Life

The first cherries from the Turkish shop. Addictive.

I'm loving my garden..

so fragrant  on these long warm nights...

still light at 10pm.

And I'm getting huge pleasure from other people's gardens too

on my walk to and from the park..... including 

this peony bud, fat and round as an unripe cherry.

 Yesterday I was worried about this little robin though...

all ruffled up with mohican hair feathers...

as if his head had been mauled in the mouth of a cat...

 Saturday

It is the sale season.

I'm in a bed shop called Dreams.

The salesman from Birmingham asks me what I'm looking for.

I say I'm moving house,

downsizing

and I need a 

double bed

not a kingsize one that I have been used to for 30 years. 

He takes me over to a simple oak framed bed.

He asks me a question 

and I can't speak

choking on tears 

as I look down on this bed

which is so shockingly  small 

to my eyes

hardly wide enough for a child.

Let alone 

for a widow.

Everything was kingsize with Robin 

because he was so tall.

So I slipped into his kingsize life

beside him

not realising how big and wide 

he made mine.

The salesman from Birmingham 

offers me a cup of tea.

What can you say to a 

customer 

weeping at the sight of an ordinary 

double bed

plenty big enough for two

who seems to think it's not even big enough 

for one?

 But then how would he know what

 my dreams 

are made of.

Today my wonderful de-cluttering sister

helps me to empty and sort and chuck out and recycle 

the contents of Robin's garden shed.

So much easier to let go of all his old chisels and and drills and packets of out of date seeds than to let go of our kingsize bed and our kingsize life. 

And  instead squeeze myself into all the narrow spaces of my single days and my single nights.